A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Pentagon and the Trump administration from blacklisting Anthropic. The AI company was labeled as a "supply chain risk" by the Department of Defense, and President Trump had directed all federal agencies to stop using Claude.
Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, in her 43-page ruling, sided with Anthropic and noted that the Defense Department"s actions were retaliatory. Lin described the government"s approach as "classic illegal First Amendment retaliation," adding that there is no statutory basis for the "Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government."
It all started with the collapse of a $200 million Pentagon contract that Anthropic signed last July. Anthropic refused to grant the military unrestricted access to its models and sought strict usage boundaries to stop Claude from being deployed for fully autonomous lethal weapons or mass surveillance.
In response to this, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth labeled Anthropic a "supply chain risk", a label that was traditionally reserved for known terrorist organizations. President Trump further escalated the conflict, taking to Truth Social and calling Anthropic a "radical left" company, while ordering a phase-out of its tool in federal offices.
OpenAI was quick to take advantage of the situation, and just hours after Anthropic walked away, the company struck a lucrative deal with the Pentagon to deploy its models in classified networks for "all lawful purposes."
With that said, Claude is already deeply embedded in defense operations, reportedly through Palantir"s Maven Smart System, which processes intelligence and selects targets in the ongoing Middle East operations, including Operation Epic Fury in Iran.
The temporary injunction gives Anthropic some vital breathing room while the AI company navigates the legal hurdles. However, the administration has seven days for an appeal, and the actual legal battle is far from over.
via TechCrunch